Because of how Christmas falls this year, this is the end of the last full week of Advent.  It sees me busily preparing the last parts of the services that spread over Sunday/Monday/Tuesday and the perennial challenge of not 'peaking' too soon.

Today I am mindful that for some people this Christmas, indeed, every Christmas, is difficult and painful.  The list is long, and risks omitting circumstances that affect my gracious readers... bereavement, illness, relationship breakdown, redundancy, loss of home, loss of status, loss of certainty, even loss of identity or loss of faith.

I think I want to pause, before the final flurry of celebration to remember those for whom this will not be the Christmas they long for, and may never again experience.  I want to pray for them, that joy, peace, hope and love will be experienced afresh, and the future be brighter...

Jesus said, blessed are those who mourn, they will be comforted...

It's nearly Christmas time, God of love

When joy overflows in merriment and celebration

When we hope plays out in wishes expressed

When peace once more seems a goal worth pursuing

It's nearly Christmas time, God of love

When empty places at tables recall loved ones no longer here

When televised jollity rings hollow in a lonely room

When bitterness and envy creep like ivy around the hearts of the unwary

When out of sight probably does mean out of mind

It's nearly Christmas time, God of love

So help me to pause

To remember with gratitude the absent friends

To remember with compassion those who grieve

To remember with hope the mystery of Christ's incarnation

The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases,

God's merrcies never end

They are renewed every morning

So great is God's faithfulness

God of Christmas time, enfold all with your love

And bring faith, hope, love, joy and peace

Again and anew

Amen.

... is a Dutch (I think) enterprise setting psalms to music.  PAYG used this one this morning... I htught it was rather lovely and worth sharing:

When I lived in Dibley I had a dear member of my church who around this time every year would observe, "oh, you've got your Christmas cold.  Ministers always seem to get colds at Christmas."  Yes, I do have my Christmas cold (or what my family would more likely term my birthday cold, since as often as not it begins on or around my birthday) and yes, it is something ministers (and school teachers) are prone to.

There's something about this time of year when outdoors is usually wet and cold(ish) and indoors warm and bug-breeding; when shops and buses and trains are full of sniffing, sneezing, coughing people, and the activity level nears its peak.  Just one more service to prepare now (Christmas Day morning) and everything else laid out on my desk in readiness.  Just one more carol service, one more carol sing, more more child-centred service and then Christmas Day...

Today has been one of those days when it's never really got light - rain and more rain, and now the night wraps its tendrils around the outside of the Gathering Place and the yellow glow of the light in the vestry illumines my endeavours at crafting words for a waiting world.

Rhino-viruses and cold, dark, wet days conspire against merriment, and yet we persist.  Why?  It's something about hope and love and the light that cannot be overcome...

God who spoke light into existence

In this season of dark, damp, dankness

You are a ray of inextinguishable hope

God who spoke life into existence

In this season of coughs, colds and catarrh

You are the touch of indefinable healing

God whose word was en-fleshed in a human being

In this season of merriment, mayhem and madness

You are the whisper of incomprehensible peace

Thank you Coffee Club people!

Today's PAYG told the story of Zechariah and Elizabeth, and the promise of the some who would be called John.  Dumbstruck by the possibility, they waited and wondered until, sure enough, in due course the baby arrived.  Part of what struck me as I heard the reading was the anticipation of what his life might be like - the promises and dictates of the angel, the reactions of his parents who began to dream and wonder.

Perhaps it struck me as I celebrate my own "significant birthday", and I read the words penned by mother in the card she sent, recalling her feelings on that winter's day half a century ago.  I wonder what she hoped and dreamed and imagined on that day, and to what extent her endeavours to fulfil those goals have been successful?  I know that some of what she assumed has not come to pass, and that much she could never have imagined has.  At least she has lived to see how my life turned out - I doubt very much John's parents did.

God of Elizabeth and Zechariah,

Who conceives each new life even before s/he is physcially present

Help me - help us - to recognise afresh

The sacrificial love and the hope-filled dreams that inspired our parents

Who bore us, and brought us up,

Who taught us and shaped our lives

We are not naive enough to pretend that all children are cherished

Not blind to the violence and poverty that blight, in differing ways, young lives

Not foolish enough to think that every parent sees their children fulfilled

But in this moment, on this day

We thank you for what has been good in our own upbringing

And, if needs be, let go regret, bitterness or grudges that snare us

God of hopes and dreams

Hear our prayer

Amen